Second Session of Georgetown University’s ‘Women, Peace and Security’ Institute Held with Women’s Rights Activists in Attendance

The second session of the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ institute at Georgetown University in Washington was held virtually on September 7th under the title ‘Women on the Front Lines, Strategies for Change.’

The session hosted Narges Mohammadi, Narges Mansouri, and Giti Poorfazel, three women’s rights activists and signatories of Statement 14, from inside Iran, who addressed approaches to changing the situation of women in Iran.

Giti Poorfazel, a human rights lawyer, was one of the special guests at this session. She has been imprisoned since August 2020 and is currently on leave due to contracting coronavirus, after which she will return to prison.

Ms. Poorfazel said at this session: “Women’s organizations must grow day by day. Now we have organizations like Mothers for Peace that take effective steps and protest, and we must revive the organs and organizations that we had before.”

She cited as an example “the Union of Women Lawyers, which was founded by the late Dr. Mehrangiz Kar and was a member of the International Federation of Women Lawyers” and said: “We were able to reflect our legal issues, including cases of violation of women’s rights, to the international community. Since they were invited to the United Nations and gave speeches there as an Iranian woman, it had great utility and this laid the foundation for women to become aware of their rights and demand them.”

She emphasized: “Rights must be demanded. They are not given to people just like that, unless the person struggles for their rights.”

Narges Mohammadi, a labor and women’s rights activist, said in this session, referring to existing approaches in the field of women’s activities: “This is a strength of the women’s movement in Iran, which has pursued diverse approaches in different periods and has achieved significant accomplishments.”

She cited as an example the participation of a large segment of women in social movements in various periods in Iranian society in “civil activities” and said that women from different backgrounds “have been able to write a new chapter for creating change in the situation of women together.”

Narges Mansouri, a labor rights activist, also mentioned individuals such as Giti Poorfazel, Fatema Sepehri, and Sheila Entesari, and said: “Due to the unfortunate situation of Iranian society, we considered it our national and patriotic duty to sign and publish a statement called Statement 14 of Iranian women civil activists. The dictatorial government ruling Iran sought to strip us of our citizenship rights and, through an illegal act without a court order, we were arrested by the security institution of the Revolutionary Guards and held in an unknown location under prolonged interrogations and psychological and mental torture and solitary confinement—which itself is a form of torture—and even death threats, and through baseless charges such as actions against national security, we were convicted and imprisoned in the Revolutionary Court without proper trial.”

Shahrzad Samsar, Nazanin Boniadi, Masih Alinejad, and Azadeh Pourzand, women’s rights activists, were among other participants in this session who emphasized the necessity of unity and assistance from the international community, regardless of political, economic, and social inclinations, with the goal of changing the situation of women in countries such as Iran and Afghanistan.

Source: Voice of America